The Wrong Doctors (audio story)

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The Wrong Doctors was the first story in the 2013 trilogy featuring the Sixth Doctor and Mel Bush, written by Matt Fitton.

Publisher's summary

With Evelyn gone, the Doctor sets course for his destiny... in the form of his first meeting with Miss Melanie Bush, a computer programmer from the village of Pease Pottage, currently busy rehearsing with the local Amateur Dramatic Society — and blissfully unaware that her future is on its way, in his TARDIS.

Make that two TARDISes. Because at that very moment, a slightly younger Doctor is flying into Pease Pottage, too — returning his future companion Melanie Bush to her rightful place and time, after they were flung together during the course of his Time Lord trial.

Time travel is a complicated business — the iguanadon terrorising Pease Pottage being a case in point. But how much more complicated could things possibly become, if the wrong Doctor were to bump into the wrong Mel?

Part one audio

Plot

Part one

The Doctor finishes the last piece of chocolate cake that Evelyn Smythe baked, noting that there won't be any more. Lonely, he thinks its time for Melanie Bush to enter his life. Meanwhile, Mel is auditioning with Mr. Petherbridge, who goes outside to deal with a driver, telling him he should have followed the detour signs as Pease Pottage is closed for heritage matters. The driver refuses to turn around and is attacked by a territorial iguanodon.

The TARDIS arrives in the village: the Doctor is dropping Mel off in her correct time and place, following her relocation to Space Station Zenobia during his trial. After he leaves, Mel notices a cat similar to one she recalls from prior to her travels with the Doctor, and realises that they are one and the same: the Doctor has brought her to the wrong time.

to be added

Part two

to be added

Part three

to be added

Part four

to be added

Cast

References

  • When the older Doctor realises that he has crossed his timestream, he is relieved that it is not another incarnation with their scarves, frills or celery.
  • When she first met the younger Doctor, the younger Mel believed that he was going to audition for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
  • Similarly, Mrs. Wilberforce speculates that the Doctor is auditioning to play The Pied Piper, who was so-called because he wore multi-coloured clothing.
  • Mrs. Wilberforce states that Mr. Petherbridge's plans are for "the greater good". This may be an oblique reference to the film Hot Fuzz in which the older, more conservative residents of a small village engaged in a campaign of intimidation and murder in order to maintain the village's traditional nature and charm (claiming that their actions were for "the greater good").
  • At the age of eight, Mel committed the names of 150 different species of dinosaurs to memory and is therefore able to recognise an iguanodon on sight.
  • Stapleton Petherbridge was born in Pease Pottage in 1758. He was impressed into the Royal Navy in 1810 and was killed during the War of 1812. He was possessed by a time demon.
  • Jedediah Thurwell was born in 1812. He was deported to Victoria, Australia, where he met a woman named Patsy. They later married and had four children and fifteen grandchildren. He died on his farm in 1884 at the age of 71.
  • Muriel Wilberforce was born in 1884. She and her husband Francis Wilberforce were married in 1910 while their son Francis Wilberforce, Jr. was born in 1912. Her husband was killed in the First World War in 1914. After World War II, she continued working at the Pease Pottage Post Office until she was well past retirement age. She was the chairwoman of the Pease Pottage Women's Institute from 1922 to 1964, serving in that position for longer than anyone else. She died in 1964 at the age of 80. During the 1980s, her grandson Martin Wilberforce ran the post office.
  • After naming "Mel A" and "Mel B" the two versions of Melanie, jokes about the Spice Girls (which included Mel B and Mel C among its members) are made, including a pun to the title of the song Spice Up Your Life.
  • Pease Pottage is in a pocket of cauterised time, detached from the mainstream of time.
  • Mel was born in 1964.

Notes

  • This marks the first appearance of Bonnie Langford as Melanie Bush in a Big Finish audio drama since The Vanity Box in July 2007.
  • This audio drama was recorded on 1 and 2 May 2012
  • This story has some resemblance to the second serial of Sapphire and Steel, where an entity makes deals with deceased people and manipulates time.
  • Big Finish released the first episode of the story as a podcast prior to release.

Continuity

External links